The phone rings in the South Platte Ranger District office more than 80 times a day with questions. Most questions are from new forest visitors with new off highway vehicles, about technicalities of navigating the Rampart Range Recreation Area on the Denver facing district of the Pike-San Isabel National Forests & Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands. The prelude of positive customer service turned into more of a nagging clanging early this year when both the visual information specialist and support service specialist accepted new opportunities and left the district with hard to fill vacancies. The responsibilities of both positions were measured on task saturated district staff for more than six months.

“The support service staff is the glue that holds the district together and it is difficult for a program to run smoothly without a strong admin person to keep things moving,” said Brian Banks, district ranger. “To be successful you need someone with an attention to detail and ability learn systems quickly because they work with the nuances of our fire organization, contracting, leases, real property, as a collection officer and so much more.”

Even though the population of Conifer, where the district office is located, has grown 75% in the last 30 years, it is still an unincorporated town in Colorado so small the typical city government functions are handled by the county and every home still draws well water. Home prices are comparable to the Denver metropolitan area and there is a paltry pool of potential applicants for a General Schedule 4 position that requires broad administrative training and skill. Fortunately, a team was already working to deliver a solution for this problem.

Daisy Rodriguez grew up surrounded by most of her close and extended family in the rural feeling community of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Chapel Hill is one of three communities near Raleigh that make up the Research Triangle named for the three major research universities in the area that draw high technology companies. While going to college was important, Daisy had something other than technology in mind for her career.

“I like working with the public and working with key people in communities,” Daisy said, “I knew [the Forest Service] was like the Park Service but I didn’t understand the whole government part of it, I definitely recreated on [forest land] and that is where I was attracted to most of the time.”

The Lyndon B. Johnson Job Corps Center is one of 24 Forest Service managed Job Corps centers supporting the goals of the Public Lands Corps Program. The center trains young professionals like Daisy to process, monitor and administer special use permits.

Special use permit administration became an additional duty for many Forest Service employees as budget cuts and attrition eliminated positions and decimated the knowledge base dedicated to processing and monitoring the permits.

There are about 74,000 special use authorizations across the country that enable businesses providing activities from energy and water resource corridors to outfitters and guides who support the function rural economies. In 2016, about 11,000 of those permits were still mired down.

Directing special teams to focus specifically on moving permits through processing, providing program specific training for resource assistants, and providing a path for recruiting new employees through the Public Land Corps Program allowed special use permit program managers to eliminate nearly half the backlog of unprocessed permits, but it wasn’t enough.

The remaining gap lead LBJ Job Corps Center Director Arthur Phalo and Assistant Director of Lands and Realty Management Elrand Denson to build a bridge for people 16-24 years old who may already have a high school diploma, an associate's degree or an undergraduate degree but make less than $12,000 a year to join the federal workforce. Through the office administration trade, the complexity of special use permitting would immerse interns in Forest Service culture and develop soft and networking skills employees need to be successful at numerous administrative functions.

Daisy didn’t know she was only the third person to apply within the expanded program parameters. Despite complications with Agency directed remote work and the logistics of relocating halfway across the country during a pandemic, Daisy completed her 960-hour internship with the Coronado National Forest in Tucson, Arizona embedded in the special use permit team. Then, Daisy’s resume was offered to Forest Service offices across the nation. South Platte District Ranger Brian Banks brought her aboard his team at the South Platte Ranger District as the first intern hired into the Agency from the Forest Service’s LBJ Job Corps Special Uses Training Program.

“We are striving for diversity of culture and experience. Job Corps offers such a rich pool of candidates who have the passion and will to become part of something bigger than themselves,” said Banks. “You can teach just about anything, but you can’t teach curiosity, motivation, or desire to protect public lands. ”

Daisy said she hopes to dabble in many departments within the Forest Service and wants to eventually go back to school and get a more science-based degree. She likes her commute so far and is excited to take on the full spectrum of her work and start connecting the public with the forest resources available on the district.